First review about sound... fan noise

[Patrickf73]

What surprises me are the significant differences in reports and perceptions on this topic.

• On Facebook, someone wrote that a logic-song with 124 virtual instruments and many plugins opened on his Mac Mini M4 Pro within 30 seconds, and he was very satisfied with the M4 Pro. When I asked if he could hear any fan noise, the answer was “dead silent.”

• Another user wrote that he didn’t even hear the fan when rendering a big 4K Final Cut Pro project. Only during the Cinebench test did he notice a very quiet whooshing noise (probably the mentioned 24 dB), but the Mac Mini M4 Pro never got loud.

I have, especially here, read other opinions.
Ultimately, we all don’t know why the reports differ so significantly… maybe in some cases, Spotlight indexing was still running in the background, or the Mac Mini was placed in a poorly ventilated corner, or whatever the reason might be.

In the end, I’ll wait and see for myself and form my own opinion once my Mac Mini M4 Pro arrives. Since Apple has extended the return period until January 8, 2025, I will have plenty of time to make my own assessment. Every setup is different (was data migrated or was a clean install performed? How much RAM do the required programs need, and how much RAM does the user’s machine have, etc.).
If you haven’t tested it yourself, you might either miss out on a great machine in a small case at a good price, or if it doesn’t meet your needs, you could end up wasting time, as I will definitely do a clean install.

I’m not trying to say that one side is right or wrong; I just want to test and evaluate it for myself. If it stays quiet, it will be the right choice; if it gets loud, I’ll return it and wait for the Mac Studio M4, although its extreme GPU would be overkill for my purposes…

As promised, I will report back.

 

[streetfunk]

I'm starting to think the move to shrink the mac mini was also driven by the need to say it's carbon neutral and to reduce quantity materials in the process, e.g. aluminum. The energy argument should be to reduce not only production energy burden but overall energy usage on the end-user... they've probably achieved this if you compare processing task times per wattage form the m2 to m4 mini; however, the non-idle watts consumed seems to be going up... which is not unrelated to increased fan noise. Again, marketing drivers. I'm not saying the m4 mini isn't a great machine and won't suit the majority of non-power users, just that these design changes have multiple drivers -- design changes can often be tipped for form/promotion over function. I do think that a less aggressive change to the dimensions and tweaks to the heatsink and fan in a slightly larger box would have resulted in an improved thermals, acoustics, and performance -- and especially so in the m4pro. They went with an aggressive dimension/redesign change that tracks with their current marketing campaign. I think we have some sense now on the impact this has on heat and fan noise.

i fully agree !


The M4minipro is vs. my feel not exactly a pro, it´s a compromise. To put it nicely.
It´s definitly form over function !
Definitly PR related.
Imho not a professional job vs. what the userbase would asking for to have. (vs. the "pro")
And in that sense not anything a pro job at all.
How can a company develope such high tech, and then "screw it" in such diletantic ways afterwards ?

What surprises me are the significant differences in reports and perceptions on this topic.

That surprises me too !

 

[AlaskaMoose]

Exactly why I never understood the excitement about the case being way smaller

This is the result of that

Agree. The Apple's incessant "slimmer" makes cooling a little more difficult. The CPU generates a lot of heat inside the now smaller case.

 

[pastrychef]

Count me as one of those who can't hear the fan on my M4 Pro Mac mini, even when it's spinning at above 2800rpm.

 

[NewOldStock]

Some programs mathematical are more math calculations and need the processor and some need the graphics more.
Doing live video will be different than chopping up recorded video. Gaming puts the load on the graphics and not as much on the processor/cpu. Gpu intensive vs processor intensive. GPU intensive will make the fans spin up.

(((All the benchmarks need to be learned separately instead of in a big pile for the user to understand.)))

All of them like say, the fastest race car at the end of the drag race WON ,,but,, had no fuel and the one that didn't WIN had lots of fuel left.
((Both race cars finished the race)) to the end but differently.Thats why everyone repeats that the real world loads vs benchmarks don't always get the information passed on to the user correctly.

 

[Confused-User]

Count me as one of those who can't hear the fan on my M4 Pro Mac mini, even when it's spinning at above 2800rpm.

You know, we keep seeing things like this. And also at the same time all sorts of reports about how it sounds like a tiny vacuum cleaner.

I wonder if we have an actual manufacturing defect in play here. Or perhaps two different fan suppliers, one with substantially better noise levels than the other?

 

[pastrychef]

You know, we keep seeing things like this. And also at the same time all sorts of reports about how it sounds like a tiny vacuum cleaner.

I wonder if we have an actual manufacturing defect in play here. Or perhaps two different fan suppliers, one with substantially better noise levels than the other?

It was the same with the M1 generation of Mac Studios... Some people complained about fan noise while others heard nothing.

 

[tomstone74]

Conspiracist could argue that this all is a push for an increased demand on AirPods Pro 2 and the hearing testing thingy.

 

[Peter_M]

I do audio work. (not DAW production related)
i have a M4Mini pro, 14c, 24GB RAM // Room Temp is around 23° // running two screens, 2K

i heard the fans at a CPU temperature of around 63°.
My main app runs single threaded only.
That main loaded core was under a ~40% CPU load. ( the read out of the plugin host).

The M4pro definitly runs hotter than a M2pro. It heats up way quicker than my M2pro, running same projects under a way higher cPU load on the M2pro. Fans kick in very early on the M4.
Interestingly the power drain is under my load somewhat higher. While the temterature raises way more in relation.
Which tells me something. Running the M4pro under low load, -just some internetting-, the temperature is higher too. Around 52° here. (some apps beeing open in the backgroundm running idle)

I just saw here some folks guessworking that they might not hear the fans at all doing their common DAW work. I Personally i would not bet on that.
The type of the fan noise is ok. Aslong as it´s a steady controlled noise it´s sorta -halfways- ok for me.
And that´s the case in my usecase szenario.
imagine we had a similar CPU load on 80% of the cores ? Then ? i don´t know.

if you want to be sure to have a mostly quite M4desktop under most conditions, consider a coming M4Studio max to be a saver bet.

my M4 sits behind my Masterkeyboard on the same board, but i have a 2nd level board directly above, overlapping very slightly with the Masterkeyboard, 5cm above the masterekyboard.
So there is only a small gap -2 fingers in width- the noise can come thru to me "directly".

consider the M4pro to be a slightly noisy one in your studio.
Don´t take my words as something final. Just the impression from one guy vs. his (my) setup and usecase.
( semi calm noise conditions outside. No permanent audible streetnoise outside, as it was in my old place)

the cooling situation seems not adequate enough in the M4pro.
ckeck if your workloads would require sustained high loads, or just some peaks shorter in time ?
i would walk from there vs. audio work.


my CPU was running steadily at around 3.9Ghz. The loads are quite constant.
keyboard playing with very complex patches with permanent -FX based- realtime manipulation of the sound.
Thats not a very high load at all. But i hear the fan.
( i broke my fan speed setting in Istats, no clue how to get it back.....so, can´t tell you fan speed numbers. i think i saw them bevore at around 1700rpm)

my sum up: i´d not put too high bids on the M4minipro to be a hush computer for audio work.
inform yourself first in case "that one" counts !
Strangly enough, the reports are quite wide spread vs. how noisy the M4/pro is.
The last words on this are not spoken yet, in my opinion.

This is very useful info. Much appreciated, thanks!

 

[Confused-User]

It was the same with the M1 generation of Mac Studios... Some people complained about fan noise while others heard nothing.

I think it's different. In the case of the M1, IIRC the big issue was coil whine. That's a high-pitched noise that some people find especially aggravating while others can't hear it at all. The M4 Mini fan noise is not like that (when it's being reported).

 

[DankeBrutus]

It actually isn't a good thing. It's a desktop, it should remain quiet, regardless. I have a desktop with a 5800x and a 3080. This PC, while idling, consumes more power than the base M4 at max power. Even when gaming I can barely hear anything, and most of the noise comes from the fact that the 3080 is consuming somewhere around 300W.

My desktop has a Ryzen 5 3600 and RX6600. I can hear it but since I replaced the stock CPU cooler with a more beefy tower cooler the sound of the fans is more of a "whoosh" which I find easier to have blend into the background. I think with a lot of people with tower PCs they can hear the fan noise unless they spend more money of quieter fans.

Indeed. It's a desktop, there's zero reason for there to be this kind of compromise. I thought the M-series minis would finally end the long-suffering of the Intel mini's awful fan noises, but alas that doesn't seem the case. I mean I can do what I used to do and lock the fan speed to just barely inaudible, but that's not very "Apple-like" and I really expect better at this point.

This fan noise issue seems relegated to the M4 Pro though, correct? If the regular M4 is quieter then that is the Mac people should buy if silence is important to them. My primary concern is prolonged exposure to high heat. The SOC is almost certainly designed to hit high temperatures and sustain them, but the other components inside the small chassis may not be. It isn't like Apple hasn't made dumb engineering decisions before.

 

[ravenofdoom]

This fan noise issue seems relegated to the M4 Pro though, correct? If the regular M4 is quieter then that is the Mac people should buy if silence is important to them. My primary concern is prolonged exposure to high heat. The SOC is almost certainly designed to hit high temperatures and sustain them, but the other components inside the small chassis may not be. It isn't like Apple hasn't made dumb engineering decisions before.

Partly. The notebookcheck.net review seems to indicate that the fans of the m2 went from 24.7dbto 29.4 db; the m4 from 24.1db to 45.1db (however, gaming got it to only 30.3db). This means audible fan noise will likely still be present in the base m4 if you're taxing both the CPU & GPU (probably somewhere between 30.3db to 45.1db). Undoubtedly, the m4pro will get into the 30.3 to 45.1 db range faster (or into the higher range of that range faster) when taxing the cpu+gpu and the same time.

 

[IvyKing]

My experience from my M4 Pro, the fan noise was more from airflow than blade noise (not as bad as I feared it could be). The fan noise on my 2017 MBP was worse than the M4 Pro. I would rather have had the M4 Pro in the old case size allowing for larger heatsink and fan. I also wonder if the energy saved with the larger fan could have made up for the increased aluminum for the older case.

 

[Patrickf73]

I just read a thread where someone tested the Mac Mini M4, the 14-core M4 Pro with 10 Gigabit NIC, and the 12-core M4 Pro with 1 Gigabit NIC.

He mentioned that the 14-core M4 Pro had a very loud fan, while the 12-core M4 Pro was silent, with only very low fan noise under heavy load. He decided to keep the 12-core Mac Mini M4 Pro.
Maybe this explains the different experiences with the fan noise…🤷

 

[streetfunk]

He mentioned that the 14-core M4 Pro had a very loud fan, while the 12-core M4 Pro was silent, with only very low fan noise under heavy load. He decided to keep the 12-core Mac Mini M4 Pro.
Maybe this explains the different experiences with the fan noise…🤷

thats very interesting !
(edit: 14c, 10GbE here )

Hope some folks can shed some more light on this

My experience from my M4 Pro, the fan noise was more from airflow than blade noise (not as bad as I feared it could be).

good point.
this would be inline with how the noise of my M4miniP "feels".

what i figured out:
my I-stat menus app shows me a fan profile.
I´m not sure if i can control my fan RPM curve from there ?

the original settings started to accelerate the fan at 60°, indeed.
This could have been a point in my case.
So, another possible number in the equation.

 

[Confused-User]

I just read a thread where someone tested the Mac Mini M4, the 14-core M4 Pro with 10 Gigabit NIC, and the 12-core M4 Pro with 1 Gigabit NIC.

He mentioned that the 14-core M4 Pro had a very loud fan, while the 12-core M4 Pro was silent, with only very low fan noise under heavy load. He decided to keep the 12-core Mac Mini M4 Pro.
Maybe this explains the different experiences with the fan noise…🤷

Not impossible, but it's not clear to me. The 10GbE should only add ~2.5-3W unless Apple did something abysmally stupid. The two extra P cores and 4 extra GPU cores definitely add some heat, but only ~25% of the existing cores' output. Everything else should be constant between the two. So can ~25% (or less) more heat create that much more load on the fan, that it is that much louder?

my I-stat menus app shows me a fan profile.
I´m not sure if i can control my fan RPM curve from there ?

Assuming that's not a feature of iStat, there is free fan control software available.

 

[pastrychef]

I just read a thread where someone tested the Mac Mini M4, the 14-core M4 Pro with 10 Gigabit NIC, and the 12-core M4 Pro with 1 Gigabit NIC.

He mentioned that the 14-core M4 Pro had a very loud fan, while the 12-core M4 Pro was silent, with only very low fan noise under heavy load. He decided to keep the 12-core Mac Mini M4 Pro.
Maybe this explains the different experiences with the fan noise…🤷

I have a 14 core M4 Pro Mac mini with 10GbE. I don't hear the fan even when it's around 2800-3000rpm.

The only time I heard anything was when I manually maxed the fan to 4900rpm and that was more the moving of air than the fan itself.

 

[selim.koeklue]

I experienced something on both the Mac Mini M4 and M4 Pro at home: In the LR Classic Export the M4 is louder (much louder) then the M4 Pro. The M4 Pro fan only kicks in at the very end of exporting 600 pictures and is really silent compared to the M4! This is totally fine for me coming from the Mac Mini M1.

Still both have a "problem": When the fan goes up I can hear a high pitch constant noise. It happens with both and has nothing to do with CPU utilization. Only when the fan kicks in at over 2500rpm. When it is over 3000 rpm (which happenes rarely) then is fades away. Not super loud, but noticeable at some angles sitting to the Mini. My mini sits in a corner with shelves on top, right, left - nearly encapsulated with one opening to the front, which can increase this high pitched noise. Again: it happened on both. What is your experience? I will see if this is "ok" for me or not. Otherwise noise is on the Pro not an issue. Idle state temps are also around 45 degree Celsius, which is totally fine.

T

 

[Patrickf73]

My mini sits in a corner with shelves on top, right, left - nearly encapsulated with one opening to the front, which can increase this high pitched noise. Again: it happened on both. What is your experience? I will see if this is "ok" for me or not. Otherwise noise is on the Pro not an issue. Idle state temps are also around 45 degree Celsius, which is totally fine.

I would strongly recommend avoiding placing the Mac Mini in a shelf, as it can create resonance that significantly amplifies any noise.

 

[selim.koeklue]

I would strongly recommend avoiding placing the Mac Mini in a shelf, as it can create resonance that significantly amplifies any noise.

Interestingly the fan noise is totally fine. Just the high pitch noise somehow gets enhanced I feel. When I push the Mini further into the cabinet, it gets enhanced. I will try to find a new location for it.

Anyways: Let´s see if others are experiencing this as well.
My Mac Mini M1 never had that, also my Intel one was ok for years.

 

[Hallonskalle]

Hi guys! Just got the M4 Pro base model yesterday and didnt have time to do some logic testing as I am waiting for an external m2 drive to fill all stuff up with. However I had time to run Cinebench all core load, the 10min one.
After about 4-5 minutes my fan started to ramp up. You can absolutely hear it but it is also when all cores are under load. The temp was surprisingly cool at 72C-73C at the end of the test. I can upload a video/sound clip tonight if someone wants it?
I am used to my PC desktop to roam and sound like an jet engine when you do these benchmarks and found that the noise from the M4 Pro is not so bad att all under full load.
Machine feels snappy and fast and my initial feeling is I am happy with the device!

 

[DankeBrutus]

Interestingly the fan noise is totally fine. Just the high pitch noise somehow gets enhanced I feel. When I push the Mini further into the cabinet, it gets enhanced. I will try to find a new location for it.

This remind me of something I used to do with my 2015 MBA. In clamshell when playing games like WoW, Minecraft, and Civ V the fan would get loud. But if I pushed it to the edge of my desk where the exhaust was going into the gap between the desk and the wall instead of on the desk surface both the audible fan noise and average temperature went down.

If the new design has the exhaust angled downwards instead of straight out then at least some of the reported noise could be the airflow hitting up against a surface.

 

[selim.koeklue]

This remind me of something I used to do with my 2015 MBA. In clamshell when playing games like WoW, Minecraft, and Civ V the fan would get loud. But if I pushed it to the edge of my desk where the exhaust was going into the gap between the desk and the wall instead of on the desk surface both the audible fan noise and average temperature went down.

If the new design has the exhaust angled downwards instead of straight out then at least some of the reported noise could be the airflow hitting up against a surface.

In my case, the high pitched noise is audible also on a different table/place. It is emitted by the machine when the fan is around 2500-3000rpm and it is caused by the fan (or electronics behind the fan).

 

[EdwardC]

Interesting about the noise, my M2 Pro is dead silent always. Even the HP Desk Pro is silent unless I put my ear on top of it. These are around 18" away from me and I prioritize quiet. Hopefully the M4 Pro noise is not too big a deal for the users out there.

 

[Hallonskalle]

Here is a video of cinebench full load after a few minutes. It takes a while before the fan starts to ramp up. Beware its difficult to make the Noice justice depending on how loud you have your volume on cell phone speakers. I listened to this on 40% volume on my phone and that gave me kinda the same volume as IRL. Again, very difficult. However I dont think this would be a problem som working with Logic Pro as you probably never gonna have full blast on all cores. Gonna do some more testing soon in Logic I keep you guys updated